Courses

This course explores the history of imperial China between the 3rd century b.c.e. and the 16th century c.e. with a focus on the following questions:  How did imperial Chinese states go about politically unifying diverse peoples over vast spaces?  How did imperial Chinese approaches to governance and to relations with the outer world compare with strategies employed by other historical empires?  How did those approaches change over time?  How did major socio-cultural formations — including literary canons; religious and familial lineages; marketing networks; and popular book and theatrical cultures — grow and take root, and what were the broader ramifications of those developments?  How did such basic configurations of human difference as Chinese (civilized)-barbarian identity, high-low status, and male-female gender operate and change over time?

Full details for CAPS 1740 - Imperial China

This introductory course follows the history of Asia-Pacific from the nineteenth century to the present, focusing on the relations of China, India, Japan, South, and Southeast Asia.  This course is intended for students wanting a broad historical overview of what makes Asia distinctive and important in the global economy and in world politics.

Full details for CAPS 1910 - Introduction to Modern Asian History

In this course we will examine the modes of philosophical and spiritual inquiry, varieties of spiritual/bodily cultivation and practice, and religious organizations and movements in China that we know as Daoist (or "Taoist"). We will examine the ways in which Daoism was used variously to contest or legitimate imperial political power, and how the procedures and ideologies of the imperial state in turn informed Daoist theory and practice.  Throughout, we will examine the ways in which standard modern western dichotomies, such as sacred/secular, spiritual/physical, and mind/body, break down when we try to apply them to the study of Daoism.  Course will focus on the period from the fourth century B.C.E. to the thirteenth century C.E. 

Full details for CAPS 2209 - Daoist Traditions

This course offers a broad understanding of the active and dynamic cultural, economic, and social, and political roles played by Chinese women. By challenging the dominant stereotype of the passive and victimized Chinese woman, this course aims to examine women's struggles, negotiations, and challenges of the normative discourse of femininity and domesticity in terms of various disciplines, including philosophy, anthropology, history, and literature. Through a combination of reading original texts with secondary scholarship, this course will discuss the issues of Confucianism and patriarchal family, the female body and sexuality, education and self-expression, women's work and religious activities, gender and the state, the modernization of women, etc.

Full details for CAPS 2267 - Women and Society in China

What does "death" mean in the East Asian context and how is it imagined? This course aims at examining the ways in which East Asia have imaginatively, metaphorically, ritually, and visually conceived of death and the afterlife. The first part of the course deals with the popular beliefs and practices associated with the imagination of death and the afterlife; the second half focuses on the major themes of mortality, memory, and trauma in the literary, visual, and material representations. By examining the repository of images, ideas, objects, and stories from various disciplines, this course approaches the notion of death and the afterlife as cultural reflection and provide an opportunity to situate it in a comparative perspective beyond a specific genre or a specific culture.

Full details for CAPS 2270 - East Asian Imagination of Death

The Great Qing (1644-1911), a multi-ethnic empire that conquered China proper from the northeastern borderlands, expanded into central Asia, Mongolia, and Tibet, and consolidated the China-based empire's control over its southwestern frontiers. An heir to both Chinese and Inner Asian traditions, the Qing empire laid the foundation for the modern Chinese nation-state. In this course, students will focus on the political, legal, social, cultural, and intellectual aspects of China's last empire. Students will also locate the early modern Chinese empire in a regional and global context, examining its power influence in Korea and Southeast Asia, and its encounters and interactions with Western and Japanese imperialist powers. These encounters and interactions contributed to the domestic turmoil and foreign invasions that would eventually led to the decline and demise of the Chinese empire, but they also gave rise to new forces that would shape the fate of modern China in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Full details for CAPS 2931 - China's Early Modern Empire

A historical review of the fragile and volatile U.S.-China relationship from the opening by Richard Nixon in the early 1970s until the present. Several individual sessions will be led by current or former executive branch or congressional officials, business people, journalists, representatives of nongovernmental organizations and others who have worked in China or have participated in the making of U.S. policy toward China.

Full details for CAPS 3000 - Seminar on American Relations with China

This course provides students with an analytical framework to understand China's ongoing economic transformation. The courses goals include: 1) to familiarize students with different perspectives on China's economic development and future prospects; 2) to provide a close working knowledge of the evolving current situation, with a focus on internal variation within China—telling different Chinese stories, not one "China story"—and particularly emphasizing urbanization and the goal of shifting from manufacturing and export-led to services and domestic-led economy; and 3) to give students hands-on experience using Chinese economic data in the context of a brief research note. Each week will connect to current events and debates, with students writing three blog posts over the course of the semester to bring academic research and social scientific analysis to bear upon policy-relevant questions and developments.

Full details for CAPS 3049 - China's Next Economy

People outside China often talk about "China's rise," the changes in world economics and politics that come from the increase of the power of the People's Republic. From a domestic perspective, though, China's rise represents a promise to regular people that they will lead richer lives, both literally and figuratively. This course will examine the nature and history of that promise as it is experienced through literature, film, and other cultural texts. Why and how do PRC citizens want to get rich, and what happens when they don't? How does economic class shape identity in contemporary China? Can parts of the population be happy outside of the pursuit of material wealth? All texts in the course will be available in English, and most primary texts will be available in Chinese; writing assignments will be submitted in English.

Full details for CAPS 3352 - Getting Rich in Modern China

Examines the development of the Chinese economy and the evolution of China's economic system between the early 1950s and late 1990s.

Full details for CAPS 3380 - China's Economy Under Mao and Deng

Using resources specifically available in China, this course combines lectures, guest lectures, field trips, and faculty-directed research projects to help students achieve an in-depth understanding of China's changing politics, economy, society, and culture.

Full details for CAPS 4001 - China in Transition

This course, offered by faculty members of Peking University's School of International Studies, provides Chinese perspectives on contemporary China's international relations.

Full details for CAPS 4002 - Chinese Perspectives on International and Global Affairs

Honors students conduct research to prepare a thesis on a topic of their own choosing under the direction of a faculty member. The application must be successfully submitted and an Honors Committee formed by the end of applicant's junior year in order for the student to be an honors candidate. Permission to enroll in CAPS 4020 is contingent upon the advisor's judgement of the viability of the student's honors thesis by the end of the semester.

Full details for CAPS 4010 - Honors Thesis Tutorial I

This course is designed for those who have studied Mandarin to the advanced level (or equivalent). The course aims to continuously improve students' Chinese proficiency while, at the same time, preparing them for studying or working in a Chinese native environment. Along with the growth of Chinese economy, issues on Chinese business and economy become a hot topic. Following this trend, authentic Chinese materials selected from a variety of sources will be introduced in class to enhance students' Chinese professional skills and promote their understanding of the macro and micro business environment as well as the economic history, present, and future of China and its partners in the global economy.

Full details for CAPS 4406 - Readings in Chinese History and Business Culture

Through guided readings in Chinese of selected poems of the Tang dynasty (618-907) on various themes and in different styles, students develop the essential analytical skills for reading Tang poetry while gaining an understanding of its social, cultural, and historical contexts.

Full details for CAPS 4420 - Tang Poetry: Themes and Contexts

As China, with its "China Dream," rises in power on the global stage, what "China" means to its inhabitants and outsiders has become an issue increasingly relevant to business, international relations, and cultural exchange, and a topic that draws intensive attention from historians and social scientists. This course brings together undergraduate and graduate students who are interested in shifting meanings embedded in the concept of "China," either as part of their research agenda, or as a useful lens for comparative analysis. Focus will be on how China as an Empire/ a Nation was conceptualized by different people in different periods and in different contexts, and on the reality and representation of China as political, cultural, racial, and geographical entities.

Full details for CAPS 4772 - China Imagined: The Historical and Global Origins of the Chinese Nation

This directed study course allows CAPS students to enroll at Beida (Peking University) in courses offered to international students by the Peking University School of International Studies.

Full details for CAPS 4888 - Directed Study - Beijing

This required course forms the core of the Cornell in Washington academic program. The foundational skill of both politics and policy is taking knowledge, analyzing it, figuring out how to convert it into action. This course aims to give students the experience and understanding of how this process of knowledge into action works. Students will undertake a substantial research project in a topic related to or affected by politics and/or policy (broadly defined), and examine it through a variety of approaches and disciplines. The main goal is to understand the issue, analyze what is going on, and evaluate what options are available to respond.  The idea is to not only define and examine the issue, but also think how to create and implement a solution. To do this, students will examine their issue using multiple different forms of inquiry (normative, empirical, and policy analysis) to see what each of those reveal as well as to see how the choice of how they investigate it shapes their results. CAPS students must do a topic that is related to Asia. GPHS students must do a topic that is related to public health.

Full details for CAPS 4998 - Inquiry in Politics and Policy

Independent study course in topics not covered in regularly scheduled courses. Students select a topic in consultation with the faculty member who has agreed to supervise the course work.

Full details for CAPS 4999 - CAPS Independent Study